running: the dawn

So, after my enthusiastic post about my new Garmin, I got a less-than-enthusiastic reception from Mr. Dawn.  “Gigit?” He said rolling his eyes.  “It reminds me of a dog…”  Well, actually that’s not too surprising since I’ve been suffering from dog-fever (a state of wanting a dog for an extended period of time).  It would make sense that I would project my puppy love onto the Garmin.

I was thinking: a Garmin Gadget=Gigit (I really like all the G’s).

Apparently this isn’t going to work because the few times that I’ve referred to her by name I’ve received some very pronounced eye-rolling.  Looks like I’m back to the drawing board.  I do feel attached to her being a “she,” especially since I already have Sir Cap’n Pete ruling my life.

So, suggestions?

I am planning on writing a full review tomorrow.  So stay tuned for that!

Today I had my first full interval workout.  I must say, I am so thankful that I had the GPS to help me forge these uncharted waters.  My plan had been to take some paper and my stopwatch to record the times and then come home and convert them to see if I had been running fast enough or not.  Luckily I didn’t have to do that!  In fact, I was a little thrown off because I was planning on doing my 5x100m repeats on the local track but it was still being used when I ran over there.  I almost put off my workout when Mr. Dawn reminded me that I can just use my new toy.

It worked PERFECTLY!  I was able to set it to give me a warm up time, followed by 5 kilometer intervals followed by 5 minute rest between (which ended up being a little long, I’ll have to tweak that).  I ran down to my favorite spot and once I felt sufficiently warmed up I simply pushed the lap button to begin my first interval.  I didn’t look at the time while I was running them.  I wanted to do it more by feel and not feel tied down to the pace.  So I didn’t see how I was doing until I was done.  Here are the pace splits (in min/mile): 7:00, 7:02, 7:23, 7:20, 7:13.  Keeping in mind that I was just doing a kilometer, I still feel really great about the speed work.  Sustaining that fast pace for longer was really challenging, but I enjoyed it!